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October 1, 2014

Doctor Who: The Space Museum

I find this serial to be a little creepy, but also interesting. The TARDIS crew get a glimpse of their future and spend the entire episode trying to avoid a terrible fate.

When the TARDIS materializes, weird things immediately start happening. They aren't wearing the same clothes they were seconds before. They don't leave footprints in the dust outside. They walk into a museum, and the other people there don't see them or hear them. They discover that the TARDIS jumped a time track, and they are slightly in the future. One problem. They find themselves as frozen exhibits in the museum.

This is the creepy part.

They reason that when the cases disappear, they will have arrived, others will be able to see them, and the countdown to them ending up in the cases will begin. It turns out that the museum is run by Moroks. They enslaved the native population of the planet Xeros and made a museum dedicated to Morok conquests.

The sight of the TARDIS crew in the cases is pretty disturbing, and they are all rightly horrified by the thought of ending up like this. It comes up again and again in the episode. Is this the right choice to change the future? What if doing this is how we ended up in those cases? It's interesting. Of course they all eventually get captured, but Vicki made friends with the rebels in the meantime. She not only befriended them, but she broke into the Morok armory and got weapons for them. This leads Ian to postulate that maybe they don't need to change their own future themselves - that it could be changed for them.

This episode isn't great, but it has a cool ending. The familiar Dalek music plays, and it cuts to a Dalek saying that their enemies have left the planet...and that the Daleks' time machine will allow the Daleks to hunt them down.

THE RUNDOWN

Doctor: FirstCompanions: Ian, Barbara, VickiEpisode: #15, "The Space Museum," four parts- 'The Space Museum,' 'The Dimensions of Time,' 'The Search,' 'The Final Phase'Adversary: the MoroksClassic Lines: Vicki: "Time, like space, although a dimension in itself, also has dimensions of its own."Tuck This Away to Impress Your Friends: The Doctor says he was with James Watt when Watt was experimenting with steam power.Next Up: "The Chase"